About the Focus on Energy Project

Photograph of two students working outside.

What is the Focus on Energy Project?

The Focus on Energy Project is a partnership between teachers, TERC, Seattle Pacific University, Tufts University, and Boston College. It was funded by the National Science Foundation. Our goal is to make learning fundamental energy ideas and energy reasoning strategies a common experience for young students. Our vision is elementary science classrooms where teachers have the resources they need to teach about energy and where students are engaged in developing, testing, and revising a model of energy that they can use to describe phenomena both in school and in their everyday lives.

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and the Framework for K-12 Science Education lay out an ambitious progression for learning about energy, beginning in elementary school. To help the nation’s teachers address the NGSS challenge, The Focus on Energy Project brings together research, curriculum, assessment, and professional development in one coherent system.

The Focus on Energy Project is asking:

  • Teacher learning: What are the characteristics of experiences, resources, and supports that help elementary teachers learn the energy ideas, practices, and pedagogy that they will use in their classrooms?
  • Student learning: What are characteristics of experiences and resources that support students’ use of representations and energy reasoning to develop and refine models that describe energy forms and flows associated with everyday phenomena?

The Focus on Energy Project is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. #1418052 (TERC) and #1418211 (Seattle Pacific University). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.